The 2013 Fall Movie Preview is a broad snapshot of films opening through Nov. 1. Release dates and other details, as compiled by Oliver Gettell, are subject to change.
SEPT. 6
36 Saints
Two New York City detectives hunt for a serial killer targeting...

Matt Porterfield's new film, "I Used To Be Darker," has been a festival favorite abroad. But soon Baltimore will get the first wider-release peek.
According to a statement, the Baltimore director's third film will have its national opening in Baltimore...

A dozen films to be shown at this year's Maryland Film Festival have ties to Baltimore or Maryland — a record number, organizers say. Here are some of the highlights:
"12 O'Clock Boys" Maryland Institute College of Art grad Lotfy Nathan's...

It used to be that the Maryland Film Festival was just a cool neighborhood event for Courtney Knipp — a bunch of obscure movies being shown just up the street from her home in Mount Vernon.
Not anymore, not with thousands of film fans massing in...

Baltimore auteur Matt Porterfield, a distinctive talent among American indie filmmakers, shifts gears in his third feature, "I Used to Be Darker." Forgoing the documentary elements but not the aesthetic rigor that made his previous film, "Putty Hill," an exquisite meld of genres, he adopts a somewhat more conventional fictional approach.
The low-key movie revolves around a family in the midst of a sea change: the end of a marriage and the disparate coming-of-age trajectories of two cousins. It's a story...

The "Diner" guys, Tracy Turnblad and the moody teens of Hamilton will be basking in the New York spotlight this month, thanks to a Museum of Modern Art exhibition focusing on the works of Baltimore filmmakers Barry Levinson, John Waters and Matt Porterfield.
"Our Town: Baltimore," running through Dec. 24 at the venerable Manhattan art showcase, opens Thursday with Levinson's 1982 "Diner," an ode to '50s-era Colts fanaticism and the shift from the easy answers of adolescence to the complicated...

Familial bonds are not easily broken. Bent, stretched, ripped, damaged and warped all out of shape? Definitely. But irreparably broken? Rarely.
Baltimore director Matt Porterfield's "I Used To Be Darker" looks carefully at what it means to be a family, at the responsibilities those bonds entail and the costs they exact. With great tenderness and relentless honesty, it watches as parents and children struggle over just how strong the ties that bind them together are. The result is a film consistently...

Filmmaker Gregory Bryan says he was "sick and tired of seeing the same Hollywood films." What he came up with instead was "The Dark," an ethereal, 21/2-minute nightmare complete with crawling blackness, creaking skeletons and enough creepiness of all kinds to win the 2011 Sun Shorts film contest.
"I really just wanted to experiment," says Bryan, 24, who, when he's not crafting eerily compelling nightscapes, works for his dad's cabinet-repair company. "It was an amazing, thrilling experience."
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The five artists in the Baltimore Museum of Art exhibit "Sondheim Artscape Prize: 2011 Finalists" all live in either Baltimore or Washington, D.C., but they are stylistically all over the map. This makes for an eclectic exhibit that changes as you walk from one room to the next.
It's ironic that the most impressive artist in the show is the one whose photojournalistic work might not even be considered "art" in some quarters. Washington photographer Louie Palu, whose photos have appeared in publications...

"I Used to Be Darker" is meant to jump from the blocks at full speed: A 19-year-old discovers that she's pregnant, grabs a knife and exacts devastating revenge on the cad who knocked her up. After she loses her job overseeing bumper cars at an Ocean City arcade, she high-tails it to Baltimore.
The film's writer-director, Matt Porterfield, and his co-writer (and partner), Amy Belk, pack a midsummer day's nightmare into a vivid streak of incidents. It could be the perfect lift-off for the rest of the story...